Fiber optic connectors couple optical communication channels (e.g., optical fibers) to one or more optical devices (e.g., electro-optic and opto-electric devices). The optical communication channels may be defined by a bundle of glass or plastic fibers (a “fiber optic cable”), each of which is capable of transmitting data independently of the other fibers. Relative to traditional metal connections, optical fibers have a much greater bandwidth, they are less susceptible to interference, and they are much thinner and lighter. Because of these advantageous physical and data transmission properties, efforts have been made to integrate fiber optics into electronic system designs. For example, in a local area network, fiber optics may be used to connect a plurality of local computers to centralized equipment, such as servers and printers. In this arrangement, each local computer has one or more optoelectronic devices (e.g., an optical receiver, an optical transmitter, or an optical transceiver) for transmitting optical information or receiving optical information, or both. An optoelectronic device may be mounted on a printed circuit board that supports one or more integrated circuits. Typically, each computer includes several printed circuit boards that are plugged into the sockets of a common backplane. The backplane may be active (i.e., it includes logic circuitry for performing computing functions) or it may be passive (i.e., it does not include any logic circuitry). An external network fiber optic cable may be connected to the optical transceiver through a fiber optic connector that is coupled to the backplane.
In general, the trend in the electronic equipment industry is to pack an ever increasing amount of functionality into an ever shrinking form factor. To this end, electronic equipment, such as computers, diagnostic devices and analytical devices, typically include numerous printed circuit boards stacked in a high density, parallel arrangement. In order to incorporate optical transmission devices into such densely packed, parallel arrangements, the fiber optic cables typically must be introduced into the electronic system in an orientation that is substantially parallel to the printed circuit boards to which the fiber optic cables are to be connected.
A wide variety of different approaches for coupling a fiber optic cable to an optoelectronic device that is mounted on a printed circuit board have been proposed. For example, in one approach, the optoelectronic device is mounted orthogonally to the surface of the printed circuit board so that the optically active surface of the device intersects the light transmission axis of the fiber optic cable. In another approach, the optoelectronic device is mounted parallel to the printed circuit board surface and individual optical fibers couple the channels of the fiber optic cable to the optoelectronic device over an arcuate light transmission path of 90° (see, e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 4,553,813). In still another approach, U.S. Pat. No. 5,515,468 has proposed a connector for directly coupling a fiber optic transmission line and an opto-electronic device that is oriented substantially parallel to a printed circuit board substrate. In this approach, an optical component that includes, for example, a reflective surface and possibly one or more optical lenses, is positioned to direcly contact the fiber optic transmission line and direct light over a 90° arcuate light transmission path between the optoelectronic device and the fiber optic transmission line.